Agreed. The article as a whole is very positive towards
Perl and hugely respectful of Larry Wall and his
contribution to the scripting world.

I included this quote because it contains a lesson:
it shows how Obfuscation Contests can be used as a
propaganda weapon to damage Perl's reputation.
Since attempting to outlaw Perl obfu contests is
clearly absurd, the best we can do to protect
Perl's reputation is to respond promptly and
accurately -- as brian_d_foy and merlyn did above.
BTW, I heard a rumour (but I'm damned if I can find
anything with google now) that O'Reilly did not
sponsor the TPJ Obfuscated Perl Contests because
they felt they would project the wrong image of Perl.
Does anyone know if there is any truth to this rumour?

Perl actually stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language

To nitpick with Mr Clinick, I refer to the draft Oxford
English Dictionary entry cited on
history.perl.org:

Perl Brit.
Perl, perl, irreg. PERL
Computing.
perl n. ,
arbitrarily chosen for its positive connotations, with omission of
-a- to differentiate it from an existing programming language called
Pearl. Coined by Larry Wall in the summer of 1987; the program was
publicly released on 18 December of that year. Acronymic expansions of
the name (such as Practical Extraction and Report Language and
Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister), though found in the earliest
documention for the language, were formed after the name had been
chosen. Coinage details confirmed by personal communication from L.
Wall, May 2000. A high-level interpreted programming language widely
used for a variety of tasks and especially for applications running
on the World Wide Web. The form Perl is preferred for the language
itself; perl is used for the interpreter for the Perl language.

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other